The vast Vostok project is to develop new oil fields in northern Siberia. The plans include building 15 new towns for 400,000 workers. Rosneft expects Vostok oil production to be on the scale of the entire North Sea.
MME is run by veteran Pakistani oil trader Murtaza Lakhani, who lives in the UK. The firm, headquartered in Singapore, donated half a million pounds to the Tories in November 2019 through its UK subsidiary, Mercantile & Maritime UK Ltd, which Lakhani also owns and controls.
Vitol, meanwhile, recruited former Conservative minister Alan Duncan in 2020.
Rosneft’s Western allies
Sources at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy suggested Kwarteng had not spoken out on the deal because MME is not a “British” firm – despite its UK subsidiary and the Tory party donation. Companies must be registered in the UK in order to make political donations.
A spokesperson for the department dodged the question, telling openDemocracy: “While this is ultimately a commercial matter, we welcome the growing number of organisations and governments joining the whole international community in isolating Russia, both diplomatically and financially.”
Labour MP Chris Bryant told openDemocracy: “This simply doesn’t pass the sniff test. I start to wonder whether this kind of shenanigans explains the government’s appallingly slow sanctioning of Putin oligarchs.”
The Conservative Party did not respond to enquiries.
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